Long Lines At the Polls Could Mean a Surprising Night

"I sure am glad we brought these chairs!"

Line at my precinct at 10:30 a.m.

One fellow used his bike to roll with the flow.

Lots of time to chat with neighbors.

For the first time in all the years I've been voting, I waited an hour and forty-five minutes in line to cast my ballot in a presidential election. The long wait wasn't due to any inefficiencies at the polling place: the system was working well. There were just a heck of a lot of people.

My Florida precict has 1900 registered voters, and the staff and volunteers were processing about 100 voters per hour, or about 500 total since the polls opened at 7:00 a.m. In addition, about 700 had already voted by absentee ballot or in early voting. That left only 700 more registered voters unaccounted for at 12:30 p.m. when I headed home, and about 100 of those were standing in line as I departed. The polls will be open until 7:00 p.m. in Florida (one hour later in the Florida panhandle, which is in Central Time) so it is possible, at least at this rate in this one precinct, that turnout could be above 75%.

I had been pooh-poohing all the gab on TV about how this would be a high turnout election. As a reporter, I've been hearing that prediction my entire career, and it has never come true. The last time--in my lifetime--that the voter turnout level reached even 60%, was in 1968--and back then I was in high school. After 1968, the percentage began to drop every four years until finally settling in at a low of 49% (1996) and a high of 55% (1992 and 2004).

And that's been the rule for most of American history. You would have to go back to 1840 to find a voter turnout of 80.2%, and in that race voters were anxious to defeat incumbent Democrat Martin Van Buren and replace him with war hero William Henry Harrison. Tunrout fell for two more decades then rose again to 81.2% in 1860, when the pre-Civil War drama brought voters to the polls in record numbers. Numbers fell again until 1876, when the turnout rose to 81.8% and America had its most disputed election of all time--(Rutherford B. Hayes vs. Sam Tilden). In the next most disputed election of our history--the election of 2000--the voter turnout was just 51%.

A volunteer at my precinct said he had been told to expect a turnout of 85% and at noon, they were right on track to meet that prediction. If that's true, this truly will be a history-making election. Americans exercising a precious right in record numbers: that is big news. Especially since it is a right we've neglected so long. A right my father and millions of others risked their lives to ensure. Whatever happens today, it is a great day for America.

And it will mean one more thing: a turnout of 85% would blow away all of the "models" pollsters use to predict elections. So we could be in for a very surprising night.

(For voting statistics in U.S. elections go to this very helpful web site http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html
and please email me with experiences you had on voting day.)